The President of the Madrid Assembly, Enrique Ossorio, has decided that the table of the regional parliament, where the PP has an absolute majority, should open an investigation to determine whether the Vox spokesman Rocío Monasterio was present in the plenary session of two different Sitting out voted February 1st. This emerges from a documentation accessed by EL PAÍS, in which the former regional vice-president makes a detailed analysis of what happened, noting that the matter does not end up at the Commission for the Status of Deputies, where a trainer would have been appointed for the case, which would predictably have led to a delay in the investigation. Ossorio is thereby accelerating the foreseeable sanction of Monasterio, who faces a suspension of up to 30 days as a member of parliament, to which loss of salary and a pro-rata share of the Vox parliamentary group's subsidy could be added.
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“Based on the investigations carried out, the following facts can be established,” begins Ossorio’s letter about the February 1 meeting. “The one that had been the seat of Mr. Ruiz Bartolomé [dimitido dÃas antes] It was empty. (…) Mr. Henriquez de Luna [diputado de Vox] “He occupied this seat during part of the meeting after pressing the attendance button on the seat that did not correspond to him at the beginning of the meeting,” it continues. “(…) Before I started voting, I informed the plenary session,” he remembers. “After I was informed by the Chamber's services when recording the minutes of the plenary session that there appeared to be an error in the first vote, I requested that the matter be clarified,” he continues. And he concludes: “From the images recorded by the Chamber Services, it appears that the famous Lady Monasterio San Martín could have voted not only for her seat, but also for the vacant seat.”
The President of the Chamber's letter ends by leaving it up to the Presidium to “initiate, process and decide on the appropriate sanction procedure if it deems this appropriate.” But that is a purely aesthetic consideration. The PP has the absolute majority in the organization and believes that the case should be opened and sanctioned. At the same time, Ossorio advocates compliance with a guarantee procedure that includes the request for an explanation from the person under investigation and the possibility of making as many allegations as it deems appropriate. It is therefore foreseeable that the committee will recognize its jurisdiction in the matter on Friday, which will lead to an acceleration of the procedure.
“It is an abbreviated procedure,” describes a parliamentary source familiar with Parliament's internal debates, where it is believed that referring the case to the Commission on the Status of MEPs would have only exacerbated the problem, as the decision would have lengthened the processing times. Resolution by convening and meeting of this committee; the election of a lecturer to study the subject and receive advice from the Assembly's legal services; and finally draft a proposed resolution that should have been presented to the board.
Everything happened like that. On January 25, José Luis Ruiz Bartolomé, Monasterio's right-hand man in the hall, left his seat to return to private activities. On the 31st, 24 hours before the next plenary session, Pablo Gutiérrez de Cabiedes resigned from the seat that corresponded to him next on the electoral list. In this way, Vox entered the chamber with fewer MPs present than she had voted for.
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This February 1, the videos of the meeting reflect how Monasterio pressed the button for his and the ongoing seat that was empty after the resignation of Ruiz Bartolomé, ostensibly to be able to vote at least once. Vox thus received more votes than MPs present in the plenary session. An irregularity that Parliament has been investigating ever since, with the never-hidden intention of punishing it.
“These are technological things,” justified Monasterio, who assured that he was not trying to vote twice but rather to eliminate the seat of Ruiz Bartolome; and that he is the victim of a political hunt orchestrated by regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso. “It is impossible to vote on behalf of a deputy who has already been dismissed, he did not even have the seal on the seat, it is all absurd,” argued the Vox boss. At least there is a precedent for sanctions for a similar case, although not the same one: the Constitutional Court has already approved the Basque Parliament's punishment of Carlos Iturgaiz (PP) for attacking a deputy in a session at which he was not present , had fired.
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